THE CALL GIRL WHO CLAIMS SHE’S A VIRGIN (Nov, 1959)

Must have been a slow news week. They manage to take half the article to string out the idea that she *might* be a lesbian. Googling her name I found that I had posted another article featuring her and other teacher/call girls from around the same time.

She later went on to write an apparently salacious yet frank book about her days as call girl. What I found most interesting (at least in the post I read) was the idea that a woman’s prison was the only place a woman could safely be openly gay. According to the blurb, she was not, in fact a virgin when she got into the business. Shocker I know.

Also a somewhat disturbing quote about her father that intimated a possibly abusive father and/or the public’s fascination with the Freud: “My father was a shadowy figure in my life, scarcely distinguishable from any other big man with a hat and cigar”.

THE NAME “VIRGINIA” is derived from the word “virgin”. And, incredible as it might seem, it’s quite possible the most talked-about call girl in the country today is aptly named.

We’re referring to Virginia McManus, the beautiful blonde who, until recently, followed the school-teaching profession in Brooklyn, by day, while allegedly following the world’s oldest profession in Manhattan, by night.
According to her name, Virginia should be a virgin. And, according to Virginia, she is!

Even more important — according to TOP SECRET information it’s quite possible she’s telling the truth!

Now, let’s face it. The mere fact that Virginia says she’s a virgin doesn’t mean a thing. If anybody’s apt to be prejudiced on the subject, it’s honey herself. And, while it could be said that a girl who goes to bed with a man isn’t necessarily a prostitute, a prostitute who has never gone to bed with a man is an impossibility.

Yet Ginny has been officially branded a prostitute. In fact, she did a three-month stretch for having been caught by the cops with her defenses down.

Despite the evidence, however, we’d like to refer you to a statement made by Miss McManus shortly after the judge handed out her matriculation papers for a semester in the jug — a statement that’ll cause many an uplifted eyebrow among Manhattan’s Martini Minions.

At that time, a reporter for the N.Y. Daily Mirror — obviously a man who likes to start his stories at the beginning — asked Ginny to tell about her “first experience with a man”. She replied in no uncertain terms: “I have never had ANY experience with a man, and I do not intend to — unless I am married!” Yes, students, there you have it in teacher’s own words! Her statement, naturally seems fantastic on the lips of a beautiful babe of 26 who has been twice arrested and once convicted on charges of selling her favors at $100 a night.

And yet — TOP SECRET can reveal here, now, and exclusively that it is not wholly impossible that Virginia is that most impossible of all creature: a virgin “prostitute”!

“THE BARE FACTS”

Sure, maybe it is true that when vice cops raided the plush apartment of Beatrice Garfield (who’d made a profession out of procuring pretty girls for paying guests) in the early yawning of February 6, 1959, they found Virginia was one of the four girls there. The one with the least clothes on.

In fact, Ginny didn’t have enough threads on her back to cover a high-school diploma, much less her extracurricular curves. And she was found indiscreetly perched on a bed in which lay the type of man call girls call a “John” —in this case, the $100-a-night type. Maybe it’s also true that about a week before this raid, the same cops had tuned in on a phone call coming from that same plush apartment (the one with the John in the bedroom). And on the phone Madam Beatrice had told a friend how she and two other girls — one of them our little schoolteacher — had been in bed together the night before.

All three nuder than the bananas in a banana split.

And they hadn’t been alone. In the same rather crowded bed had been two men. This educational little study period was abruptly recessed, however, when a couple of Joes came trotting into the bedroom and scared off the Johns.

Yes, these sexy sessions might really have happened, just like the law says. Who are we to deny the facts, Ma’am — the bare facts. But despite all this alleged evidence to the contrary, we still say Virginia might have a case when she says she’s virtuous.

The case isn’t too apparent if you consider things she was heard to say when the law came a tap-tap-tapping on her telephone. But if you consider some things she DIDN’T say — things she has never told about herself, and which have never been told anywhere till now — then you’ll see why the Virgin in Virginia might not be misplaced after all.

(TOP SECRET has learned that Miss McManus is planning to publish a biography of herself late in 1959. It’s doubtful, however, if even that will go into what we dare to go into here!) A top psychologist who commented on Miss McManus after her arrest said she was “highly articulate” with an “excellent vocabulary”. One thing Ginny has never been highly articulate about, we can assure you, is a little penchant of hers — one which, had the psychologist known of it, would have been food for several more interesting diagnoses on his part.

We’re referring to Ginny’s favorite type of hangout — those little side-street cafes in Greenwich Village that would strike the normal person as being a trifle weird, to say the least.

The kind of place where men are strictly off-limits, where girl-meets-girl, to dance together, cheek-to-cheek, snuggled tightly to each other’s bosom, hardly moving their feet to the sensuous music, completely oblivious to anything or anyone around them, on dance floors so small a fair-sized automobile would hardly find room, and so dark it would barely be seen if it did.

These are the hush-hush lesbian dives, where waiters are deep-voiced girls, with short-cropped hair, dressed in natty tuxedos. Where girls from the local bohemian set and from uptown cafe society mingle together to enjoy the intimacy of their own set.

(Ginny has often been quoted as saying she prefers “offbeat” people to “normal” ones.) Girls from the Social Register are found here, too, their foreign runabouts parked in gleaming splendor under the street lamps. Young daughters of doting dowagers whose blue blood would turn sickly green if they knew where their little Brendas and Leonoras were spending their evenings — and the gender of the creeps with whom they were passing their nights.

Many of the girls who make these bizarre bistros their home-sweet-homos actually hate men, or simply dislike them to the point of loathing. Others are afraid of anything in pants that isn’t a girl.

All the true habitues have one thing in common: Where sex is concerned, they prefer their own.

Which makes us wonder what a girl of Virginia McManus’s “conviction” finds so fascinating about these twilight zones.

And what did she mean when she said, after her conviction on charges of prostitution: “If I had to do it all over again, there’s only one thing I might have changed. I might not have remained chaste!”

Certainly on odd statement from a convicted call girl! But perhaps we can understand her better if we take a closer look at this ex-schoolteacher whose face and mink-draped figure have become familiar to millions of tabloid readers in the past few months.

“CLASSROOM TO BEDROOM”

“I was a bright child,” Virginia says of herself. “I always got along well with people and still do. They tell me I’m fun to be with.” (A little TOO much fun, cops think!) For such a fun-loving femme, she seems to have flunked out where boys were concerned, in both high school and college. Or maybe she never gave it the old school try. She says she had no boyfriends in those days, was never engaged to be married, and never married.

She became a schoolteacher, and in October, 1958, we find her teaching English at the William H. Maxwell Vocational High in Brooklyn — a career that ended abruptly on the night of October 3rd.

That’s the night she decided to stroll over to the apartment of her friend, Beatrice Garfield, who just happened to be operating what police called a “clearing house for call girls” at 135 East 6lst Street, near swank Park Avenue.

When Ginny walked in, two girls were in the bedroom, trying to convince a couple of men that “sex should never be suppressed”, and Miss Garfield was trying to convince the men that they should put cash on the line — $50 apiece, to be exact — before they began unsuppressing themselves.

The men put an end to all this shop-talk by announcing they were policemen. At which point Miss McManus very properly turned around and walked back out of the apartment — only to be picked up at the elevator and packed into the paddy wagon with the rest.

The following day, Ginny found she’d become a celebrity. Her picture was splashed over the front pages, and back in good old William H. Maxwell Vocational High some of her fellow teachers were tittering over the idea that it “must be a real compliment to get $100 a night for that sort of thing!” Others couldn’t believe the story was true. “How could a girl who’s spending her nights that way get up early enough the next morning to catch the 7:30 subway to Brooklyn?” one asked. “And why should she even bother to come over here for a miserable $20 a day if she’s getting $100 a night having a good time in Manhattan?” The judge must have agreed. Beatrice Garfield got 60 days in the Workhouse for being a madam. One of the girls who tried to interest the officers in sex drew a suspended sentence (the other was saved by being under age).

And Virginia was acquitted.

This naturally put her out of a job — a legitimate one, anyway. But while Virginia insisted she still wanted to teach, and thought she’d have to go somewhere else to do it, she declared she would not be made to “run”. She didn’t either. Because two months later she was in court again. This time because her landlord had put a padlock on her apartment door.

He said he’d watched various “male and female visitors going in and out of her apartment from 10:00 p. m. to 4:00 a. m. on various occasions.” He also said the superintendent of the building was complaining because there was no hot water left for other tenants during those hours, so much was being used in Ginny’s apartment.

On a basis of these goings-on, the landlord had decided Ginny was in the play-for-pay profession, and he didn’t want that type in his building.

Once again the judge was on Ginny’s side. “Suspicion is not proof,” he ruled. This made it two times up for the McManus girl. The third time came in February, 1959.

Late in January, vice cops had hooked in on the phones of a $350-a-month apartment at 405 East 63rd Street — rented by no other than our old friend. Beatrice Garfield, not long out of the clink. They didn’t have those hot little earphones on long before some tantalizing bits of talk began coming thru.

On January 28, someone named “Georgette” phoned someone named “Karen” to offer her “a copy of the list”.

“Johns?” asked Karen, breathlessly.

“Yeah.” “Yes! Make one for me!” What makes this call so intriguing to our case history is that “Karen” is the name Miss McManus used for phone calls at the time — in a futile effort to flim-flam New York’s Finest.

“WIRE-TAP TIDBITS”

On January 29th, more tantalizing tidbits were heard when Beatrice spoke with a girl named Gayle Siney.

“I slept with Bruce, but didn’t get paid,” Gayle complained at one point.

“Warren asked to come over,” Beatrice said, further on. “Six of them. I had to turn away a crowd. I hope they come back.” Needless to say, at this point the vice cops were reasonably sure they weren’t wasting their time.

On that same Thursday, Beatrice made another call. This time to Martin Benjamin, her lawyer. She discussed some rather un-legal things, however.

“Hello, Marty? Can I talk?” “Yes, he replied, completely in error.

“Well, last night Karen and I and Jill were in the bedroom. Gayle was outside. Frank came into the bedroom with Bob. We were in bed with two Johns in the nude. The two Johns are big shipping men, $100 men. You know who they are …. They got scared….” “I’ll put a stop to it. I’ll speak to him,” Marty replied, meaning he’d tell that Frank fellow to stop chasing the customers away. Especially when they were already wrapped up — in bedsheets.

Once again “Karen” referred to Ginny. She admitted as much in court. But she had been at Bea’s to “collect a debt”, she said, and for no other purpose. She didn’t say why she was collecting it in bed and in the nude, but presumably a woman has a right to collect debts in any attire she desires. And not wearing any clothes might merely have been her method of trying to convince whoever owed her that she really needed the money.

Another thing should be pointed out here, before we go on to the next fascinating phone call. Namely, the fact that there were two Johns in this bed — with three Jills. Or, rather, one Jill, plus a Ginny and a Bea. Three to two. Doesn’t that leave someone dancing alone? And, if so, was that someone our own little Virgin-ia?

The next really important call was made at 1:42 a. m. on the morning of Friday, February 6th. We say “really important” because it was considered the chief evidence against Ginny at her trial. The call was from Barbara Jackson, another of Bea’s girls. Virginia answered.

“I just got out of the tub,” she said. “Are you going back to the apartment?” Barbara asked.

“Hell, no. Is Howard there?” Howard sure was. Hi honey,” he yodeled. “I’ve got a $100 John who wants (deleted). . . I’m sending him up.” “Is he safe?” Ginny wanted to know. “He’s safe. I checked him out. A Texan. Look, honey, he likes Barbara, and he wants her, but you know what to do. He has $175 in cash and his check is good. He may even be good for two bills. Take most of it in cash, the rest in check. Give him what he wants.” “Okay, but if he’s a cop, I’ll die.

“He’s safe. He likes Barbara. Where’s Beatrice?

“She went to meet a man from Scarsdale. He wants to get (deleted). . . He’ll be up soon. He’s good for $100.” Barbara got back on the phone. I’ll come up as long as there’s money, she said. I’ll help out.” She came up all right. Just how much of a help she was is still uncertain. When vice cops barged into the apartment about an hour later, here’s what they saw: Beatrice in one room, in a black halfslip. Also in a hot embrace with the gentleman from Scarsdale.

Gayle Siney rushing from the bedroom in a black undergarment.

Barbara getting up from bed, modestly attired in a lonely brassiere.

The trick from Texas, in the same bed. attired in absolutely nothing.

And the maidenly Miss McManus seated on the bed in the same outfit she usually wore when collecting debts.

“I wasn’t doing anything!” Barbara quickly told cops.

“I wasn’t doing anything!” our exschoolteacher said, haughtily leaving the room to get her clothes, (without even raising her hand to ask permission), her educated assets bouncing most enchantingly along with her. “Are you enjoying the view?” she snapped at the cops, who obviously were.

“I don’t know what it’s all about!’ cried Gayle. “I wasn’t doing anything. I just came up to stay the night with a friend.” “What’s all the fuss?” asked Bea, a true pro. “Relax, boys — let’s have a few drinks and a good time!” “Let’s go,” said the cops.

“I WASN’T DOING ANYTHING”

They went. This time Ginny struck out. She drew a sentence of three months in the Workhouse for being a V-girl.

And once again she was not caught ALONE with a man.

In fact, judged by her own words, Ginny doesn’t exactly consider men the greatest thing that ever happened.

When asked which company she preferred, male or female, she answered that “women have always seemed more understanding to me, and less demanding.”

And when asked if she had ever been infatuated with a woman, her reply was the tantalizing type. “I’m not as frank as all that!” she exclaimed. “My reply is: Discretion is the better part of valor!” Someone commented that, since most of her difficulties seemed to have stemmed from her association with Miss Garfield, it was strange she should continue the association. To which our highly articulate ex-educator replied that she refused to choose her acquaintances by the standards of public opinion. And that, “Even after spending a month in jail with Bea, I still enjoy her company. Do you think you could say that about many people?” As to our original question — whether or not Virginia is a Virgin as she claims to be — we’ll let you draw your own conclusions.

Obviously it’s not one of those things that can be answered overnight.